Sad Princess Diana Interview Tops the UK's Most-Watched Serious TV

The interview with Princess Diana that infuriated the establishment so much they had James Bond whack her off* has been declared the most-watched serious TV programme ever shown in the UK, with 22.77 million people gathering to see the Panorama special in 1995.

The list of the UK's all-time most viewed programmes reveals that an episode of Only Fools And Horses from December 29 of 1996 was the overall most watched TV programme with 24.35 million viewers, just beating, bizarrely, an episode of posh rural sitcom To The Manor Born that was shown in November of 1979, one that was seen by 23.95 million people as there wasn't much else to do for fun in November of 1979, so whatever was on got watched.

The Diana interview is by far the most modern thing apart from sport to have united the country around a TV, as the rest of the top ten includes 1960s variety, the 1978 Mike Yarwood Christmas Show, (21.40 million comatose viewers willing their deaths) and the famous 1980 episode of Dallas when JR was shot. But didn't die and it all went downhill after that.

As did, it turns out, the hobby of sitting in one room with your entire family watching sequential programming in silence until bed time, as nothing made within the last 15 years has brought more than 20 million people together to worship our fictional idols. [Telegraph]